raspberryturk | MHA #1, Monday Afternoon

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MHA #1, Monday Afternoon

After a certain conversation after class today, Reno had hurried home, a frown on his lips and a million haphazard thoughts ricocheting around inside his skull that weren't amounting to much more than a whole lot of "Oh, crap."

Things were going to need re-thinking. Lots and lots of serious re-thinking. Now they weren't just trying to steer fate, the Turks were trying to Do The Right Thing in the process.

Now, all Reno had to do was... well... inform the other Turk who had anything to do with this.

And that was why he was picking up his phone and dialing. Shit shit shit.

[Contents of phone call and conversation are NFB, that there was a phone call and that Elena came over for work things is totally cool, though. For the blonde Rookie! No, not that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or... that one, either. Dammit, she knows who she is.]

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Elena nodded, swallowing past a lump in her throat. She walked past him and towards a particularly lived-in couch. She was going to keep her chin high and be cold and detached. She was --

"I'm n-not sorry."

Oh, fuck. She was going to start talking.

"I'm not. I know I shouldn't have but I didn't mean to. I didn't run up to her and tell her. I didn't want her to know. But she asked t-too many questions, like, 'when did you talk to me last?' and she saw right through all my excuses, no matter how hard I tried, because she's my sister and I know, I know we're Turks and the emotions aren't supposed to matter and the job comes first but she's my sister, Reno! That fucking means something and I can't just lie to her face! She called me a little idiot and kissed the top of my head and I lost it, I just started crying, fine, that's unprofessional, lecture me all you want, but she put it together and I couldn't throw her off. I tried. I made up some story about an ugly fight but she didn't buy it, and maybe I'm glad she didn't because fuck the Turks, Reno, she's my sister! She has a right to know! It was my f-fucking fault and she has a right to know and if you're going to fire me for that then you go right fucking ahead because I love her and I'm not sorry at all, even if I fucked the timeline and the whole world's going to end, because she's my sister and sh---"

This particularly passionate (and tearful) outburst was interrupted by a thump on the side of her knee. Which was, when she looked down, an orange-and-white cat, sitting on the couch, headbutting her leg.

She stared at it (him? her?) like she had never seen a cat before.

"When did you get a cat?"

And would said cat mind being scooped up? Head-butts were friendly greetings, and she could use a furball right about now.

"June," Reno replied, easily. Somewhere in the middle of Elena's outburst, he'd started to breathe again.

Thank Ramuh.

"An' that's all well an' good," he added a moment later, making certain that the door was closed and locked behind himself. "'Cause I was talkin' about Zack."

He rummaged around in his pocket for a moment, and dug out his cigarettes and lighter.

Oh, brother.

The cat of unspecified gender and name was now sniffing Elena's face. Friendly little thing. Amazing what a cat could do for your nerves.

"... What?" she asked, glancing up at him. No real energy to it. She seemed to have lost hers in that outburst. "What happened to Zack?"

She might as well get the rest out of the way.

"Rosalind knows," she said. "Not the specifics, but she knows. I didn't tell you or Tseng because I thought it'd go badly. And ... and because I almost felt like it wasn't your business, I guess."

Reno outranked her, and Tseng was the Director, but Rosalind was family, and that made this a personal matter and they could both fuck off. Even if they were both family, too, in their own way.

Petey was of a very unspecified gender, indeed. Reno had once made up a whole song-and-dance number about how he'd been fixed.

"You know," Reno noted, taking a deep drag from his cigarette and exhaling lazily before walking across the room to flop over into a chair, "I ain't pissed off at you over Rosalind, Elena. Shit, she asked me to train her, even. I got her up at the asscrack of dawn, shootin' at me on the beach every day, yo."

And from there was his training with Ghanima. Reno had very busy, training-filled mornings, nowadays. It kept him from getting too antsy.

"I know she knows."

Elena settled onto Reno's couch, wriggly cat on her lap. Cats were awesome. She should have brought Rookie.

"I want to change it," she said, almost defiantly. Inviting him to object. "I don't care about the timeline any more. It was wrong and it shouldn't have happened."

And she couldn't lose her sister again.

"Which is why I offered to train her in the first place," Reno replied, lightly. "You think bein' trained up by me after all the trainin' I got from Ghanima ain't gonna make a difference?"

Here came the ferret, to investigate what the cat was into.

Also, Mako had a sock. It was his sock and he loved it and would Elena like the sock?

"Hi, Mako," Elena grinned, leaning down to take the sock that the super adorable weird little weasel thing offered her. And then to pull it a few inches away, and then back to him again. Who wanted to play keep-away? Get it! Get the sock!

Petey did not seem to mind sharing her. Petey probably had yet to notice.

"So you're with me on this? We save her?"

It was hugely important. She had to be sure.

"What happened with Zack?"

"We save Rosalind," Reno replied, and then he frowned. This was going to be a several-packs-of-smokes conversation, he could feel it in his bones. "According to the Little Blonde Rookie Network," which was Ino, "Zack knows way more about his future than we thought he knew, zoto."

"He didn't hear it from me," Elena said easily. He wasn't fighting her on Rosalind. They could save her. They could save Amelia and another little Elena would have her big sister back. (Suddenly, Elena was irrationally jealous of the other version of herself.)

That meant she probably wasn't in trouble, or fired, or whatever else they'd been yelling at each other about. Between that and playing keep-away with the ferret, she was hitting 'mellow' fairly quickly.

"Maybe the timeline is stupid."

"Ain't stupid," Reno replied with a small quirk of his lips. "It's just fucked."

Which was apparently not going to change from this point on.

"I told Ino that if she needed any help savin' his Midgar, they got it. I don't think they know about Zack yet, but..."

Well. It was almost bound to come up sooner or later, at this rate.

"I'm in," Elena said. "Whatever they need. It's not ... right. We change it. That's the point of being here, isn't it? We change things and ..."

She was being illogical, and emotional, and she should probably try to be calm and rational about this. But she didn't want to.

"Zack doesn't deserve that," she said. "And neither does she. And she's here and ... I don't want it to happen again. I don't think I care about anything else. I can't sit back and watch, this time."

That there? That was the thoughtful, painful silence of Reno, coupled with the musty aroma of tobacco smoke and the joyous honking of a ferret who had managed to successfully share his sock.

"Ain't our world," he reasoned, almost absently. "How the hell are we to know that we can't save it, right? Things are already different, if Zack knows shit he shouldn't, yo. So... we do it. We do whatever the fuck we can. We do the job."

"It's not really our place to change it," Elena said, growing serious. "If we ruin everything ... we'll have to live with that."

More blood on their hands. Was it worth it, for a chance to save the world? Or at least a few people in it?

"It became our place to do somethin' the moment the catalyst-" Yes, Reno knew that word, "-for all the events that saved it found out that Midgar is goin' down, that Jenova's got a hand in it, and that she's got the power to control SOLDIERs, zoto. We just didn't."

He pursed his lips, remembering what Ino told him.

"He knows Cloud leaves ShinRa. From the sound of it, he don't understand why."

Elena gave Reno a particularly dark look at that.

"Was it Cloud?" she asked. "He's been telling some of my friends things. And then I get to answer questions that are nobody's business because an eco-terrorist has a bug up his ass."

"AVALANCHE hypocrisy at its finest," Reno sighed. "You know, I don't know. Ino never told me. I got the feelin' that Zack wouldn't tell her if she went and asked, either. But who else knows?"

Reno was at an impasse. He wanted to kick somebody's ass for this. And it would put his job with the school at risk. He'd spent a lot of the afternoon so far wondering which was higher on his list of priorities, and teaching managed, barely, to win.

"Best I can do while I'm teachin' here is try an' fix the damage, yo. But from what I hear, the puppy ain't doin' too hot. I don't blame him. Knowin' that shit's comin'..." He frowned. "Don't get me wrong. I got no love for Zack. But nobody deserves that."

Elena ran a hand through her hair. "Does it matter who?" she asked. "He's got bits and pieces from all over. The puzzle pieces clicked into place. The only question is, what now. And that, we seem to agree on."

Fix it. Somehow. They had enough information that maybe they could.

"And whether or not we tell Tseng."

"Whether or not you tell Tseng," Reno intoned, and then took another moment's pause for another pull from his cigarette. Mmm, tobacco. He didn't bother to exhale before speaking again, smoke drifting from his mouth like a dragon's breath as he spoke. "He ain't exactly my number one fan right now, zoto."

Elena was so distracted that she forgot to play keep-away with the ferret. Thus earning her a very sad honk.

"You're still not talking?" What. The. Fuck. "Do you want me to smack some sense into him?"

Which was also an excuse for her to go and talk to Tseng, yes. Shhh.

"Eh, if you want," came Reno's dismissive reply through another lungful of smoke. "It ain't just him bein' stubborn, yo. But I can take or leave him right now, it's him that's hurtin' back there."

And Rude. Reno's phone calls to Rude lately usually involved a lot of being complained at, in Rude's special, very monosyllabic way.

Poor Rude.

"I'll see what I can do," she offered. He might act like it wasn't bothering him, but this estrangement couldn't be good for either of them. "... Would you be willing to foot the bill for something that might get him off your back? And a little less bitchy at Rude?"

Elena shook her head. "What if Zack gets stubborn?"

"If it'll get Tseng off my ass, I'll sign my next paycheck over right now," Reno snorted, and then pulled his pack of cigarettes from his pocket again and held it out Elena's way.

He was thoughtful like that. Kind of.

"Stubborn how?"

He was awesome, and Elena needed that cigarette, thanks. She was going to light up and let the nicotine fix calm her down before continuing.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't know him well enough. Maybe he thinks it's not our place to interfere, or maybe he doesn't want help from the Turks. If we stop Nibelheim ..."

Then what happened after that? It was an enormous blank slate.

"What if he stops Nibelheim? He's gettin' experience here that he'd never see on Gaia. How does Bahamut compare to that big friggin' lizard people keep talkin' about? If we get enough invasions on the island, you think he'll be able to hold his own against ShinRa's army, next?"

Reno flicked his ash into a coffee mug that had some fluid in it no longer fit for human consumption.

"He knows that shit is gonna get bad. If he thinks it ain't our place, then he's the one damnin' it all, and we tried. And he ain't got no reason not to want our help, Rookie. He was on good terms with the Turks until the end, zoto."

Well, with many of the Turks. Not so much with Reno, who had always been and who always would be an impulsive, territorial bastard.

Edited 2010-08-03 11:21 (UTC)

"We could get through to Tseng, if we had to," Elena mused. "Get information from our Tseng, along the lines of, what would someone have to say for you to know that they knew something personal? Use that to get that Tseng's trust, and tell him what he needs to know."

They could do the same with Reno, except that Reno and Zack were never friends. Zack trusted Tseng, and vice versa.

MHA #1, Monday Afternoon

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